“Attending conferences like this builds our brand awareness, enables our market reach initiatives and serves as a focal point for business development discussions,” KMC Business Development Director Mike Kallelis said.

SLAS began with the merging of the Association for Laboratory Automation (ALA) and the Society for Biomolecular Sciences (SBS) in 2010, according to Steven Hamilton, Ph.D, SLAS Director of Education.

“Probably the most significant achievement has been the seamless blending of program interests, components and attendees from the two legacy organizations,” Hamilton said.

The conference website boasts a record-high attendance this year, so it’s no surprise that SLAS Marketing Communications Director Tom Manning says the community helps make it a must-attend event.

“The community aspect of what transpires at the annual SLAS conference is critical and tough to explain unless you have experienced it firsthand,” Manning said. “Culturally, SLAS members are a friendly, open and collaborative community – camaraderie seems to transcend competitive advantage and our members and attendees generally operate in a mindset of trust and helping one another succeed.”

KMC Business Development Manager Walter Gilde echoes Manning’s sentiment. “SLAS is a leading life science and technology conference attended by senior scientists and R&D personnel from the life science and clinical diagnostic industry. Consequently, it is a great venue to network and build relationships with past, current and prospective customers. Additionally, this conference provides insight to industry trends and news.”

Keeping our fingers on the medical device industry pulse

Kallelis said the conference also helps our team keep up with industry trends.

“Outside of Business Development activities, two of our engineers were able to attend the technical sessions and learn about new technologies and trends in our industry,” Kallelis said. “It’s important for our engineers to stay current.”

What did other attendees enjoy?

I posed this question to the SLAS LinkedIn group.

Joe Chin, Delta Automation Services Group at Novartis, gave a list:

Location! San Diego was perfect.

All the new equipment and diverse vendors. You can see the changes in the industry all in one place.

You can comparison shop very easily.

The vendor presentations with hot lunches.

Joe, although there wasn’t much outdoor time, our team definitely enjoyed the sunny escape from snow-covered New Hampshire!

Andy Zaayenga, laboratory automation professional for drug discovery and biobanking, said, “The exhibition was great this year, but my absolute favorite was Eric Topol’s keynote.”

He wasn’t the only one to note Topol’s keynote, so I tracked it down for you! You do have to register with SLAS though.

George Rodrigues, Senior Scientific Manager at Artel, had a lot of input on SLAS2014:

Okay, the location is great, and so was Topol’s keynote. The entire event stimulates the mind with business possibilities. Here are some other memorable impressions.

The FIRST high school robotics kids. Great to see the next generation of automation engineers, engineering managers and technology business leaders starting their careers.

The number of “parallel kinematic” devices (I hope this is the correct term) that were on display. I’m thinking of the devices that move several actuators at once in cooperation to navigate in three dimensions, as opposed to the more traditional linear x,y,z arrangements.